Become a Better Interviewer

Interviews are poor predictors of actual job performance. Here's how to improve.

Interviews are the most common personnel selection tool and the most heavily weighted factor in hiring decisions. Unfortunately, interviews are also notoriously inaccurate predictors of actual performance on the job, with decades of industrial and organizational psychology research indicating that the average validity of a typical unstructured interview is around 20%. In many cases, flipping a coin would be a more robust method for selecting among job candidates. With the cost of a bad hire estimated at one year’s total compensation, individuals and organizations can benefit greatly by learning how to boost their hit rate.

Problems with interviews

Here are some of the reasons why interview-based hiring decisions are so often inaccurate:

Intrinsic limitations of the interview:

Interviews are situation-specific “samples” of behavior that often do not generalize to job performance. When we meet job candidates in an interview context, most of us are prone to mistake their “state” in that particularly stressful and artificial situation, as instead being reflective of their “traits.” So rather than perceive that a candidate is overly formal and reserved because he or she is being interviewed, we tend to see the person as having those personality attributes in every context. There is also a higher degree of subjectivity in interviews than in other selection tools, and the two main purposes of the interview- assessment and recruitment- often interfere with one another.

Interviewer biases:

Some of the common cognitive biases that interviewers frequently demonstrate include:

- Leniency: rating all candidates favorably

- Stringency: rating all candidates unfavorably

- Central tendency: not differentiating between candidates

- Contrast effect: evaluating candidates in comparison to others

- Halo effect: one good or bad attribute determines the entire evaluation

As described earlier, it’s imperative to standardize the ways in which information is gathered across different interviews. Equally important is to standardize how information gets evaluated. Here are some suggestions:

- Rate all candidates on the same criteria using the same scale

- Use separate rating scales for each criterion

- Be mindful of biases in making ratings

- Make ratings as soon as possible after the interview

- Discuss ratings of candidates with other interviewers as soon as possible after interviews

In conclusion, getting interviews right matters a lot. Ideally, employment interviews should be part of an evolving, integrated candidate evaluation system embedded in an evolving, integrated Human Capital system. The guidelines above, when implemented properly, can increase the accuracy of job interviews and spare the organization the time, money and energy that gets wasted when interviews are not predictive.

Another problem with interviews is the number of references out there telling people how to behave in an interview. The pressure to get the job will have people behaving any way they think will get the job. The references all say to act like an extrovert, answer questions this and such a way, etc. So what the interviewer is seeing is as likely to be a picture of what books the person has read as a real snapshot of the person.

And so far, every interview I've had was about being friendly and personable, and no one cared about job skills!

"Fly on the wall," if you don't have the job skills (as listed on your resume), you don't get an interview. Why should the employer waste time rehashing your resume? The good news is that if you reached the point of an interview, they've already approved of your skills.

The big question what the employer wants to know, is if you'll get along with the team. Bosses already have to deal with so much workplace crap, that they don't want you adding to it. They're checking you out to see if you're a fit within the company.

Here is the secret: the boss wants to hire someone exactly like themselves. So the best advice I have is to mimic the personality temperament of the interviewer. You don't have to act like an extrovert if they are an introvert. That would be silly. Become good at reading personality types, and you have a huge advantage in the interview. Look for my Kindle book called: "Selling Yourself." It will show you how to quickly pick up on the interviewers personality style, and how to mimic it without looking goofy.

Second key: If you have a radically different personality type than the interviewer has (and you probably do), then what you do is to own the differences early in the interview process. For example, when they say "tell me about yourself," you can start listing the ways you're not like them: "I'm not a warm, fuzzy person. The good part of that, is that I don't get my feelings hurt when people walk past me without saying 'good morning'. People also tell me that I get passionate when around others that are incompetent. I'm sure that isn't a problem in your well managed company, so you'll probably won't even notice that aspect of my personality."

Try to remember that the whole process is about personality relationships. Talk about traits and values. And if you can, talk about how yours are similar to theirs.